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Open Forum Fifty Years After Simone De Beauvoir's the Second Sex

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Open Forum Fifty Years After Simone De Beauvoir's the Second Sex 08 Galster (jk/d) 22/3/01 1:43 pm Page 243 Open Forum Fifty Years after Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, What is the Situation of French Feminism? A Conversation with French Historian Michelle Perrot Ingrid Galster UNIVERSITY OF PADERBORN, GERMANY In this interview, conducted in the first half of 1999, the notable historian speaks about the current state of French feminism. She points out that although its structures have been weak from the beginning, its influence has been relatively strong. Above all, feminists’ demands for parity in political mandates brought about a change to the French Constitution. Other topics addressed in the interview include the respective strengths of the various feminist movements and their interaction with American feminism. IG: Michelle Perrot, since the beginning of the French feminist movement in the 1970s you and other historians have thought about the possibility of writing the history of women. One of the outstanding results was the well-known five-volume study which you edited together with Georges Duby in the early 1990s and which has by now been The European Journal of Women’s Studies Copyright © 2001 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), Vol. 8(2): 243–252 [1350-5068(200105)8:2;243–252;016886] 08 Galster (jk/d) 22/3/01 1:43 pm Page 244 244 The European Journal of Women’s Studies 8(2) translated into 11 languages. You have many students who approach history from the same perspective and who are today in research and teaching positions at French universities. Outside France it is perhaps little known that you have also participated in the feminist debate and that you have regularly used the media to inform a lay audience about the current state of women’s studies and the feminist debate. Fifty years after the publication of The Second Sex, I would like to ask you about your own assessment of French feminism today. MP: French feminism is a paradoxical affair. Its influence has been rela- tively strong: yet its structures have been weak from the beginning, so much so that one must wonder today how it has at all been effective. The number of feminist associations is rather limited; there are only about a dozen of them. From the heroic period of 1970–5 only Choisir has remained, owing to Gisèle Halimi. After 20 years of monthly debates, Dialogues des femmes has just been dissolved (Alice Colanis). Regarding the more recent past, organizations come to mind which had been founded in order to promote parity in politics. But most of these were also dissolved. After the modification of the constitution their members felt that they had fulfilled their mission. There is an exception, however, L’Assemblée des femmes (Socialist, Yvette Roudy), which has for four years organized a university summer school. But one could also think of CADAC,1 the Maries pas claires,2 or perhaps the association of female journalists, which fights vigorously against sexism in the press and in advertising by awarding an annual prize to the least sexist piece of advertising; or one could think of Réseau pour la mémoire des femmes, which ensures that the position of women in the city and in chronology is remembered. There are also older associations which practise feminism: for example the AFDU (Association des femmes diplômées des Universités, founded circa 1920), which is currently examining the gender-related inequality of scholarly careers as well as the disastrous consequences of coeducation. Of course, one should not under- rate the importance of different local groups. Furthermore, we have various feminist journals: Nouvelles questions féministes (Christine Delphy), Les Cahiers du GRIF (Françoise Collin), Clio (which was founded in 1995 by female historians) and Lunes (the first issue of which appeared in late 1997). In these all kinds of information can be found. Within the context of feminism there are also numerous conferences on scholarly or political topics, such as the one in January 1999 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Every year, on 8 March – and this was particularly the case in 1999 – there are colloquiums, debates and presentations on the topic of women, among them one in Le Mans on ‘Women and Peace’ and one in Rouen on ‘Women 08 Galster (jk/d) 22/3/01 1:43 pm Page 245 Galster: Open Forum 245 and the Second Millennium’. There is usually a large audience on such occasions. Feminism is finally capable of mobilizing people on certain occasions, as shown, for instance, in November 1995 during a demonstration of almost 30,000 women in Paris, which was retrospectively seen as an omen of the December movement. And recently feminists organized the boycott of the Galeries Lafayette, where live models presented in shop windows the lingerie of Chantal Thomas. The business was forced to discontinue this kind of advertising. All of these examples display the current nature of feminism: it is vigilant, latently present and ready to emerge when necessary. But the most important action of recent years was the movement in favour of parity (from 1990 on), which led to a genuine discussion within the political class, in society and among feminists themselves. Following parliamentary debates it brought about a modification of the constitution. Today we have an Observatoire de la parité whose task it is to develop specific measures to put parity into practice. Despite its organizational weakness and a certain difficulty in gaining a foothold among the young generation (women under the age of 30 often begin their sentences with ‘I’m not a feminist, but . .’), feminism represents a latent force capable of mobilizing people if necessary, and a movement which has contributed to change and discussion in French society. IG: Many egalitarians in the footsteps of de Beauvoir have by now noticed that universalism is a myth because it has de facto been respons- ible for the exclusion of women from politics. According to their opinion, feminists emphasizing difference seem to demand what has already been imposed on them. The deconstructionists, in search of the repressed feminine, will eventually be able to do without women, since the return of the repressed may be equally well if not more so found in men.3 Are not the different paradigms perhaps caught in an aporia? MP: The egalitarian and universalist feminism – in the mode of de Beauvoir – continues to be, I think, the dominant one in France. But today the egalitarians denounce much more intensively the traps inherent in the universal, such as it has been constructed. This does not mean that they fundamentally question the concept as such. During the debate about parity this constellation became quite clear as the univer- salists emerged as being divided on it. While some (among them Elisa- beth Badinter, Danielle Sallenave, Elisabeth Roudinesco and Evelyne Pisier) reject parity because it supposedly contradicts universal indi- vidualism, most of the others advocate parity because they see it as a means to achieve the universal, which remains a goal but has not yet become a reality. 08 Galster (jk/d) 22/3/01 1:43 pm Page 246 246 The European Journal of Women’s Studies 8(2) In this debate, differentialists were undoubtedly in a more comfortable position than egalitarians, because they could demand parity precisely in the name of this difference and they could ask that in the name of ‘us women’ politics ought to be reformed. But even these women are also divided into two groups: those who speak of two biologically radically different sexes (for instance, Antoinette Fouque, 1995) and those who speak of two genders constituted by culture and history. Practice produces difference, a difference which may be taken by them into politics, not because they are women but because they live as women. Deconstruction, however, is far less important in feminist circles in France. The debate about parity has mixed up the arguments and has affected each group on the wrong side. It has shown how important it has been at the end of this century to take up once again the question of difference between the sexes from the perspectives of anthropology (for example, Héritier, 1996), of philosophy (Fraisse, 1996), of psychoanalysis, biology and, of course, history. There is currently a strongly felt need to pass things in review in order to take stock of all the theories and to enable us to understand matters better. IG: In the 1980s, theories of Parisian origin had a great impact in the USA. To be more precise, ‘French feminism’ was almost exclusively identified with texts of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. Do you have an explanation for this misleading pars pro toto? MP: The exclusive assimilation of ‘French feminism’ with differential- ism is indeed remarkable and has always astonished French feminists, who are predominantly opposed to this. Occasionally they are in loud voice, as was the case around 1975 in the dispute that arose around the appropriation of the abbreviation ‘MLF’ (Mouvement de libération des femmes) by Antoinette Fouque’s ‘Psych & Po’ group (Psychanalyse et Politique). Nowadays, however, the dispute looks quite ridiculous. There are good reasons for the assimilation. First of all, there is the actual literary talent of the protagonists (who, by the way, differ a great deal). At the beginning of the 1970s, that is those years in which the women’s movement experienced a strong upswing, they wrote new and important works. It seemed as if the movement originated from these works, but that was by no means the case. Then there are the international repercussions which are related to their positions in the intellectual area.
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